


had to keep my nature secret

by brinnanza



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Guilt, Introspection, Missing Scene, RQG 11: The Rackets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:47:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23073457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brinnanza/pseuds/brinnanza
Summary: They are just his hands. They’re just normal halfling hands, but for a moment, back in the fight, they were not. They were - they were someone else’s hands. Somethingelse’s hands, sharp and vicious and violent.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42





	had to keep my nature secret

**Author's Note:**

> *hands* here's this. title from the mech's stranger. I don't know don't @ me.

Hamid doesn’t speak once they leave Barrett’s compound. He follows Sasha’s lead through the streets of Other London, and Hamid doesn’t make conversation, doesn’t chatter aimlessly to pass the time. Bertie nudges him once or twice, tries to draw him into poking fun at the poverty and desperation that surrounds them, but Hamid ignores him.

Instead, he stares at his hands. They look… normal. They just look like his hands, his brown skin soft and unblemished, his nails short and well-kept. They’re smeared with dirt, the remains of Sasha’s earlier camouflage, and his nail beds are a little ragged from the fight, but they’re still just his hands. They are not laborer’s hands, he knows - they have rarely known work and bear no calluses - but they are _his_ hands. Every knuckle, every fingertip, every line across his palm is familiar, a map he knows by heart.

He balls them into fists, tight enough that his fingernails bite into the heel of his palm, but they’re not sharp enough to pierce the skin. He flexes them instead, fingers spread wide, turns them over and over, searching for any sign of change, any indication that something is different, but there’s nothing.

They’re just his hands.

“Oy,” Zolf mutters, tugging on Hamid’s sleeve. Hamid looks up to see no sign of Sasha or Bertie. Zolf jerks his chin toward a side street hardly large enough to be an alley, and Hamid sees the rest of the party a good 20 feet ahead of them. “Eyes front, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Hamid says absently. He follows the others, keeping a vague ear on Zolf’s uneven gait to ensure he doesn’t fall behind again, but he can’t keep his eyes off of his hands.

They are just his hands. They’re just normal halfling hands, but for a moment, back in the fight, they were not. They were - they were someone else’s hands. Some _thing_ else’s hands, sharp and vicious and violent.

Then again, maybe they are his hands too.

It’s not a spell. He’d only ever managed to learn a few basics back at university, and none of them had been anything like _this_ , transforming his own skin into something else, something _more_. Part of him wants to believe he’d imagined it, but he can’t quite convince himself - he had felt the claws sprout from his own fingertips, had seen them slash and tear through Barrett’s guard’s clothes. They’re a part of him, somehow. Drunk on a cocktail of terror and adrenaline, he’d called them forth from somewhere inside himself, some well of power he hadn’t known he possessed.

His gaze flicks up just long enough to confirm he’s still following the others, and then he focuses on his hands, trying to call up that well of power again. Nothing happens for a long moment, and Hamid thinks back to the fight. He’d been terrified, nigh certain that he would die on some nameless Other London street with nothing to show for his life, nothing left within him to give and -

And Hamid’s hands transform.

His skin goes scaly, shimmering with brass, and the ends of his fingertips sharpen into black claws, deadly points just as dangerous as Sasha’s knives. He’d only shoved Barett’s man away ineffectually before, desperately acting on instinct, but if he uses them with purpose, he knows they will do real damage, can rip and rend and tear and - 

And maybe Liliana was right, all those months ago. All Hamid ever does is break things.

He’d wanted so badly to try and fix something, anything. He’d wanted to make something of himself, something someone might conceivably be proud of, but as usual, he has only managed more destruction, more pain. They hadn’t been able to stop the attack on Edison’s. Couldn’t catch the people responsible and wouldn’t even have this lead if not for Barrett, whom Hamid can’t protect his new friends from in any way that matters.

A lump rises in Hamid’s throat, and then his hands are just hands again. The ring on his finger doesn’t catch the light; it’s a dull, matte thing, well worn with age. And Zolf had tried to take it, tried to shield Hamid from his own actions like everyone always has to, because Hamid isn’t strong enough or smart enough or big enough. He can’t even defend himself. All he can do is bear this ring and its consequences, whatever they are.

He stifles a sob as silent tears slip down his cheeks. He is hollowed out with exhaustion, even as a sandstorm of guilt and recriminations swirls inside of him, but he doesn’t want to draw any attention to himself, not when there are more important things to focus on. He can’t hold back the tears, but he can keep them to himself, can tuck away his guilt deep inside himself.

He’s well versed in keeping things hidden.


End file.
